To save a forest, Carl Leopold plants himself By Mary Woodsen We knew it would happen one day.

Could be any of us. A deer in the headlights; a fall from a tree: the opportunities are endless. Still, Carl Leopold, who died on November 18, 2009 at 89, was the odds-on favorite. Carl and I used to joke about death and old age, but when I'd say, Carl, I'm just a baby step behind you, he'd shoot me that give me a break look. And baby step is hardly the best metaphor for evolutionary time, for galactic timefor the timescale I was trying to approximate. Carl's last conservation startup was Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve in the steep, glaciercut hills of the Finger Lakes region, sixteen miles south of Ithaca, New York. Now we have buried one of our own, lowering his shrouded body into the chill November earth. Yet long before another metaphoric baby step has passed, all us Greenspringers, along with generations of Greenspringers to come, will lie moldering next to Carl in the lowering light of that west-sloping hill, roots burrowing into our bones. Save a forest, plant yourselfnatural burial is the ultimate commingling of people and place, a grand concept with the potential to restore thousands upon thousands of acres across North America to their native glory, then conserve them in perpetuity. Lump funerals and burials together, and were talking billions of dollars a year. Imagine capturing even 10 percent of that market to save land. As each body goes in, natural cemeteries tuck away a portion of the proceeds money that could buy more land. And these don't have to be pristine properties. Scrub pasture, eroded cornfields, the occasional abandoned gravel pit: all are candidates for the beauty of renewal. In natural burial, the human dimension is twin to the natural. Carl was the one who found the words to sum what Greensprings means: Simplicity. Affordability. Respect for the human spirit. His burial, like all the others at Greensprings (100-plus by January 2012), had his families wishes at the heart of it all. Because natural burial is also about doing whats most comfortable, and comforting, for the families we serve. Carl Leopold earned a measure of renown as a scientist for his groundbreaking research in ... but hold that thought. Because Carl also was known simply for being his father's son. He lived with the opportunity (for so he made of it) that reflected glory bestows. His first name, Aldo, says it all. Nearly three-quarters of a century have passed since his father, renowned conservationist and author Aldo Leopold, bought The Shack in south-central Wisconsin and began a family commitment to forest restoration, which Carl's family carries on. I'm not sure how he did it, but our dad inspired us five kids completely, Carl told me. We all wanted to bring that old, worn-out farm back to beauty. Back in high school, he said, that lovely girl hed been dating was stunned when he wouldnt take her to the school dance. I had to go to the shack and plant trees, he said. It never crossed my mind not to. Such was the power of our dad's vision. While still a teenager, Carl created an herbarium of plants from that land and persuaded his dad to keep phenology records yearly accounts of when native plants blossomed, set seed, and died back. Long-term records like these track how plants shift their routines with shifting climates. Through the years I knew him and doubtless long before, Carl traveled often, giving readings from A Sand County Almanac and The Land Ethic as fundraisers for the Aldo Leopold Foundation and other conservation organizations. I learned only as

we buried Carl that he'd recently stopped doing those readings. It was getting too emotional. Of what else was Carl most proud, separate from his research? I'm speculating, of course. But he was founding president of the Finger Lakes Land Trust, which a quarter-century later has preserved over 11,000 acres in the Finger Lakes region of New York, an area the size of Vermont. And he was a central figure (was, indeed, the one who got the ball rolling) in founding the Tropical Forestry Initiative, or TFI. TFI tests tactics for reforesting eroded cattle farms in the mountains of Costa Rica, which retains barely 15 percent of its original forest cover. The tropical foresters Carl consulted said it wouldn't work. They said the soil had leached away and the mycorrhizae were dead. (Mycorrizal fungi help most plants absorb nutrients from the soil.) Yet today the trees Carl planted at TFI 20 years ago are 100 feet tall. Carl's confidence in his approach came largely because of the contributions he made to science. A plant physiologist, Carl spent years studying the coping mechanisms of seeds. His patience paid off in the late 1980s when he figured out how it is you can take a simple seedto appearances dry and deadpoke it into moist soil, and watch it burst forth in an exuberant incarnation of its ancestral stock. This seemingly miraculous transformation had puzzled scientists for years, so it was thrilling at last to crack the code. Sugars inside the seed go into a "glassy state" similar to the dried sugar in lemon dropsa metabolic process that helps protect and preserve the seed's essential enzymes and proteins. When dampened, those glasslike particles dissolve, the enzymes kick in, and another seed unfolds and grows. (Now similar protective systems could store pharmaceuticals such as insulin without refrigeration and in an PS. We love you, Carl.

inhalable forma boon for those vast areas of the world with too few refrigerators.) But in Costa Rica, Carl knew he was dealing with seeds that really do die if they dry out. He foraged on horseback, plucking ripe fruits and planting them right away in mycorrhizally fortified soil, then quickly transplanting the sprouted seeds to help keep the fungal association going. Of course, Carl was proud of Greensprings too. Instead of being deep-sixed in a stone monoculture, as Carl called contemporary cemeteries with their endless rows of solemn stones (oh, and factor in the mower emissions, the pesticides, the tons of concrete and rainforest hardwoods buried in each acre), he had the simplest of burials. The acorns that adorned his shrouded body. The hunk of firewood to warm his journey. The keepsake stones his children and grandchildren brought. The cloth hanky, wet with tears. (It was a cloth-hanky crowd; Carl didn't countenance wastehere lay a man who wore the same wool plaid jacket for 50 years.) Last, the copy of A Sand County Almanac. All buried with him. On the penultimate personal level, what better could he do? Save a forest, plant yourself. Long before Greensprings fills up, there'll be many Greensprings-equivalents across North America. His is a gift that gives over and againnot just because it saves land, but in ways that verge on the intangible. Being part of the cycle of lifeit takes on special meaning. To think that molecules of Carl's body, more and more as each year goes by, could end up in a bobolink's body and its babies babies bodies through generations uncountable ... he liked that image. A life well lived has many satisfactions. For Carl, this was among the best.